As election day looms in America, it appears the writing that Vladimir Putin drew on the wall just a few short months ago is coming to fruition. Having lost his patience with the constant spewing of anti-Russia propaganda – missing the bigger picture of vicious circle towards nuclear confrontation – Putin implored the western media, for the sake of the world, to listen:

We know year by year what’s going to happen, and they know that we know. It’s only you that they tell tall tales to, and you buy it, and spread it to the citizens of your countries. You people in turn do not feel a sense of the impending danger – this is what worries me. How do you not understand that the world is being pulled in an irreversible direction? While they pretend that nothing is going on. I don’t know how to get through to you anymore.

In calm tones, not reflective of the angry allegations lobbed at Americans every day of a Russia hell-bent on the election of Trump (for whatever reason they dreamed up of this week), Putin reminded a ‘deaf’ press corps of what lies ahead and implicitly what happens if and when Americans vote for Hillary.

From the Jordan to the Moskva, war drums beat. The powder keg that set off the first world war was ethno-religious conflict in the lands of the former Ottoman Empire, and in a sense it threatens to do so once more. The Balkan nations were not impressed with the botched settling of the Eastern Question, and a mix of state and non-state actors took matters into their own hands, leading to a globalized conflict. As late as 2006, the borders of the region were still being contested, when Montenegro voted to break away from Serbia.

Today, millions of people in the Levant, especially in Syria and Iraq, reject the imposed settlement of their borders. These were drawn by imperialists and zionists nearly a century ago under the Sykes-Picot Agreement to serve the interests of Britain, France, and the overseas Israeli community—and the successors of those diplomats wish to maintain those same borders. The ethno-religious conflict I am referring to in the former Ottoman Empire is of course the:

Syrian civil war

Iraqi civil war

Turkish-Kurdish conflict

American intervention in Iraq

American intervention in Syria

Iranian intervention in Iraq

Iranian intervention in Syria

Russian intervention in Syria

Hezbollah campaign in Syria

Yemeni civil war

Libyan civil war

NATO intervention in Libya

Egyptian counter-insurgency

War on Terror / global Islamic jihad

US-Russian Middle Eastern proxy war

Arab-Israeli conflict

Oh. Too many? This is the scope of conflicts that the Leviathan on the Potomac has gotten itself into, and just in the former Ottoman Empire. This does not include the:

South China Sea territorial dispute

Korean civil war

War in Afghanistan

Russian-Ukrainian border war

Combat support in various African countries

Occupation of Germany

In November, Americans will roll to the polls on their motorized scooters to elect the next Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the United States.

Hillary Clinton has a track record of following neoconservative foreign policy imperatives that favor “exporting” democracy and disrupting the enemies of Israel, such as Baathist (Arab nationalist) Iraq and Syria. Or as Republicans put it, “muh benghazi.” The Alt-Right cleverly notes that combined with America’s post-1965 immigration laws, this is a policy of “Invade the World, Invite the World.” If not for the dual policies of bombing Muslims and importing Muslims, the United States would be a radically different society. Instead of a bomb-sniffing watchdog state, we might have a night watchman state (like we used to). As late as 2000, some airline pilots would let you into the cockpit, especially if you had a small child with you who wanted to see it. Now even lingering at the front of the plane for to long means you’re a terrorist.

But it’s more than just a cultural change and anxiety about being in crowded, target-rich, or sensitive areas. The United States is required to spend billions of dollars a year now in order to prevent the next 9/11, which could have easily been prevented by not allowing immigration from Saudi Arabia, a country which practices shariah law, polygamy, and beheading of religious dissidents. Indeed, the surveillance and counterterrorism operations the United States is required to carry out against its citizens in the name of security as a result of mass immigration from outside of Europe put the state police of bygone regimes to shame. East Germany would be envious.

The other option is Donald Trump.

Donald Trump has never played a role in the shattering of nations or in conducting airstrikes against embittered medieval tribespeople. He has never been blamed for the death of an American ambassador or his staff. He has never chuckled about killing Muammar Gaddafi, whose autocratic and idiosyncratic rule of Libya raised living standards, generated oil wealth for his people, and prevented Islamist terror movements from spreading in a region where that is a problem. He has spoken favorably of Saddam Hussein, who likewise while imperfect did not preside over a millennarian civil war between two strains of jihadists and nationalist-secularists. There is something to be said for leaving these parts of the world to their own devices, even if it means they don’t get an American or parliamentary democracy. They can live without it. In fact, they literally live without it. What is happening right now in Syria and Iraq and Libya and Afghanistan and other hotspots is not life. It is death, and it is being funded with your tax dollars. By a Democratic administration that is fighting to preserve disputed borders in foreign countries while neglecting our own.

Obama and Clinton get away with warmongering because they aren’t George W. Bush. But short of committing tens of thousands of ground troops, they are doing almost the same thing he did in Iraq and Afghanistan. Perhaps worse because of the low human cost of the war to the Western side, we could potentially intervene in this conflict for, well, as long as the drone program is funded and fuel is loaded into our planes.There is no attrition. Just us turning various cities into replicas of Guernica. No bodies are sent home; no one cares.

…

Trump wants to end war in Syria and Iraq by working with the Russians and Iranians to defeat the number one enemy of international peace, which is ISIS. He also wants a moratorium on the importation of violent overseas ethnoreligious conflict into the United States.

Clinton wants to continue fighting the de jure Assad government, which benefits ISIS vis-a-vis just as much as it benefits the “moderate” rebels and non-ISIS jihadist groups. At the same time, she also wants to make the United States incrementally more Muslim each year. That’s how immigration works—less x and more y each year. Why recreate Syria in Seattle? Iraq in Idaho?

Trump wants to end the wars abroad and at home. He wants to put America First. What does Clinton want to put first?